SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Chairman of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Committee (PMC) Falih al-Fayyadh arrived in Kirkuk on Sunday to participate in an event to commemorate the killing of a top Iranian commander and an Iraqi militia leader in a U.S. drone strike.
The PMC chairman was welcomed by acting Kirkuk governor Rakan al-Jabouri upon his arrival to the city.
Fayyadh said during the event that Iraqi and Kurdish forces fought together to liberate Mosul from Islamic State (ISIS) militants.
“Weapons of Peshmerga and Hashid al-Shaabi are not to confront each other,” he added, noting that they “never want to freeze the Kurdistan Region’s revenue.”
“The Kurdistan Region and Baghdad should reach an agreement on the basis of Iraqi constitution,” he continued.
Fayyadh, who is blacklisted by the United States, will participate in an event to commemorate the killing of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.
The United States killed Fayyadh’s predecessor as PMF leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a year ago in a drone strike at Baghdad airport, along with Qassem Soleimani, the top Iranian general leading operations among Tehran’s allies in the region.
The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement on Friday that it was blacklisting Fayyadh. It accused him of being part of a crisis cell formed in the late 2019 to suppress protests with the support of Iran’s revolutionary guards Quds force.
On Saturday, the Iraqi foreign ministry denounced as “unacceptable” the U.S. decision to blacklist Fayyadh, saying it would “carefully follow up with the current and the new administration in Washington on all decisions issued by the U.S. Treasury Department against Iraqis”.
*This story was updated at 03:55 p.m. EBL time
